The Magic of Color
Color, the Very Life of Painting Color depicts and describes your subject, but it also conveys mood and portrays light, depth, and perspective. In many ways it’s the lifeblood of the art; even those painters [...]
Why Aren’t You Glowing?
“You’re glowing!” When’s the last time you heard those words? Yeah, me too. 😏 But thankfully, making your paintings glow is less a matter of accumulating poor life choices than knowing how to control value [...]
The Deep Surface
It looks wrestled and wrought into existence, chiseled out of stone from the primal bedrock of life, death, and eternity. The “bearded old man” in the painting by Rembrandt of the same name (above) might [...]
Painting Between the Lines
Jay Hambridge, “The Century Run,” lithograph, 1897, 12.5 x 19.5 in. By Christopher Volpe Compare the two images above. Note how the bicycle wheels arrange themselves precisely at and around axis points and [...]
A Closer Look at Frits Thaulow
Our previous post on water-painter-extraordinaire Frits Thaulow (which you can read here)inspired a flood of emails from readers appreciating the Norwegian Impressionist’s work. A recent visit to the Saint Louis Art Museum gave me a [...]
De Profundis
Each year, through a partnership with the renowned Art Renewal Center (ARC), we are asked to award a publication prize to one of the many striking and meaningful entries we receive in the annual International [...]
Face to Face with Humanity
“Attention is the rarest and purest form of generosity,” wrote French mystic, philosopher and activist Simone Weil. For our fast and furious media culture however, it often feels like distraction itself has become our practice. [...]
A Brush with Success
In Laurel Daniel’s video Oil Painting for Beginners it’s all about getting started right. Because getting started right can make a big difference. Brushes, brushes everywhere. One area where it’s especially important to get [...]
Photos are a Painter’s Best Friend (But Paint from Life Too)
Ryan S. Brown is an American painter in the naturalist tradition. After graduating BYU, Ryan went on to study classical painting in Florence, Italy, at the Florence Academy of Art, where upon graduation he won the [...]
Just Stop!
Level Up #3. STOP To get better, intermediate painters (which I count as anyone with more than, say, a dozen or so canvases under their belt) must go beyond the beginners’ basics of composition and [...]